How Sam Really Failed on a Remote Team

I am sure this has happened to you at least once. You are trying to solve a problem at work and need help from a colleague. So you send off a quick chat message. No answer. You follow up with an email. Still nothing. Hello? Is anyone out there?

This used to happen to me all the time. And that MIA co-worker was a guy named Sam. (I changed his name here to protect his identity.)

Absent co-workers are frustrating in any workplace. But for remote teams, this kind of “Where did Sam go?” situation can feel like an endless echo chamber.

Now I lead a fully remote team at Aha! — thankfully, we do not run into these issues often. That is because we have found there is one thing that indicates whether someone will soar or flop as a remote worker.

Teammates in different time zones, technology hiccups, and a heavy reliance on written messages — all have the potential to result in missed deadlines and misunderstandings. But you do not want to be the one creating barriers.

So whether you are already working from home or are considering joining a fully remote company, here are four ways to avoid communication fails:

Be presentYou should play an active — and meaningful — role in your teammates’ workdays. And you should do so without falling into the meetings-for-meetings-sake trap. So check in often with quick and purposeful communications. Acknowledge and respond to requests and assignments. This might mean scheduling a 10-minute check-in meeting or firing off quick status updates throughout the day. And if you receive a request from a colleague while you are busy elsewhere, just say so.

Be quickA recent study found that fast typists are more likely to emerge as virtual team leaders. And if you are on a remote team, you likely use a group messaging tool such as Slack or HipChat. So you are familiar with typing awareness indicators (“Sam is typing…”) that start and stop as you wait for a reply. I understand you want to keep your communications thoughtful, but you should also work on making them quick.

Be directIt can be harder to dissect nuance when you are remote. You cannot as easily read body language in a video meeting, and all those chat messages make detecting voice inflections impossible. In other words, there is no room for subtlety. So you need to be direct to be effective. Say what you mean with kindness and think about which channel is best to communicate your message. At Aha!, teams will frequently shift to impromptu video chats when live conversations would provide more value than rapid-fire instant messages.

Be spiritedWhen you cannot be physically present to give a high-five or a word of encouragement, you need to take extra steps to show your team spirit. And contrary to what you might think, remote teams can bond just as well as their office-bound counterparts. Studies have even found that remote team relationships are just as strong as office-based ones. So show you are invested — whether it is sharing gratitude in that company-wide messaging tool or offering support to a teammate in need.

Your team will achieve the most when everyone is fully engaged — ready to share information, feedback, and updates.

So think about what your teammates hear when they call out to you. Is it a friendly reply… or radio silence? If the latter is the case, beware that your MIA status will soon cause concern like what happened to Sam. He eventually left the company.

Remote teams thrive off of constant communication. And you need all members present and accounted for.

About Brian and Aha!

Brian seeks business and wilderness adventure. He is the co-founder and CEO of Aha! — the world’s #1 product roadmap software — and the author of Lovability. His two previous startups were acquired by well-known public companies. Brian writes and speaks about product and company growth and the adventure of living a meaningful life.

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Comments

This article is right on! I have been working remotely from my home office for 4 years. Being visible via communication is the key to my success. I use multiple communication tools like SLACK, Sales force, Outlook, Go to Meeting and my cell phone to ensure that I am visible to my TEAM. I am there to train, mentor and work with my TEAM. I am the only one that works remotely from my Company and find that I am the one that is the most available employee 🙂 So there you go!